Northern Kentucky University is among the fastest growing universities in Kentucky. It hosts over 15,000 students with about 13,000 undergraduate and 2,000 graduate students. The goal of the wireless program at NKU is to provide secure, robust and ubiquitous wireless access throughout the campus, both indoors and outdoors. This ensures that students always stay connected and feel at home. The classrooms are equipped with smart technology to ensure that the teachers can benefit from technology when collaborating with students. The IT team has blanketed the libraries, the classrooms, the dorm-rooms as well as the outdoor areas with Wi-Fi. In the previous blog in 2012, we described how the Cisco 7.5 release allows networks to recover with no client re-authentication in the rare event of your primarily wireless LAN controller goes down.

Number of students: 15,000 of which about 2000 stay in residence halls

Number of teachers/staff: 2000

# WLAN clients: Approximately 8500 concurrent clients

Access-Point Model and Units: 1200 units of AP models including AP702W, 3502, 3602, 3702, 1550 and a few older Access Points which are being phased out

Controller Model and Units: 2 Pairs of WiSM2 operating in 7.6.120.0

Switch Models: Various models 2960, 3650, 3850, 3750X and 6500

Prime Infrastructure: 1.4.2

Mobility Services Engine: 7.6

Deployment Details: We talked to Christopher Johnson, the Senior Infrastructure Systems Analyst II at Northern Kentucky University to capture some of his thoughts around their choice of this solution and the associated benefits. Read More »

There is a new generation of college students out there, I would know as I recently was one of them. Information being at your fingertips is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity. Professors’ expectations of their students have increased dramatically due to the wealth of information on mobile devices. Every class I attended leveraged some form of wireless access to the web. Instant message in response to real-time questions and online submissions are just two of many examples of how network access has been integrated into the education system. Professors would consistently use online tools such as online drop boxes for projects and web conferencing tools. According to MarketWire 92% of college students feel a laptop is a necessity, this indicates that the requirement of mobile access at a university is a given and the college experience is defined by the ease of that access.

Professors are on tight schedules and are generally available only at certain times of the day. Imagine- wanting to contact a professor during open hours only to fall short because your laptop had difficulty getting any kind of connection. I remember the frustrations of wanting to revisit PowerPoint presentations on a class website in the library, only to realize that I was sitting by the one window notorious for being a wireless dead zone. Dorms were infamous for spotty coverage. Having the dorm room located closest to the access point for best access was purely by luck of the draw. I was not so lucky. In my dorm, you would not get any wireless access unless you were sitting right next to the hallway. That’s why I am especially envious of the students of Colorado University, whose alma mater upgraded to enterprise-class coverage.

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